Pretty People Get Better Grades

It seems like some people just have it all — the beautiful people are also the smart ones, and the rest of us are just shit out of luck. It seems really unfair that some people suck everything good out of the gene pool, so some researchers decided to check into this issue and figure out the relationship between attractiveness and grades. In research revealed at the American Economic Association, our theories were confirmed — pretty people do, in fact, make better grades than their less attractive peers.

Now that science has determined that pretty people do better in school, the remaining question is this: are attractive people more intelligent (or harder workers), or are they more prone to leniency from a professor because they’re more attractive than their classmates?

Fortunately for our grades and unfortunately for women’s equality, it turns out that professors are more likely to favor attractive students in their grading – especially those that just so happen to have breasts. The study used an enormous sample size of 5,394 students and 103,803 grades to ensure accuracy in their results (statistically, a sample size of around 500 is what is needed to account for error), and showed on a 4.0 scale a .024 increase in grading for attractive students, and the least attractive students lost .067 points.

Good God, I hope they didn’t tell the participants what this study was about.

The change in grading is very minimal, showing that while favoritism exists, it is slight. Not only are attractive students more favored by their professors, but they’re favored almost three times more than students that aren’t considered to be traditionally “attractive,” making it significantly harder for them to perform as well from a purely merit-based standpoint. So like, good thing you’re pretty..

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RecruitmentChairTSM (@TheRecruitChair) is a contributing writer for Total Sorority Move. This current grad student and ex-sorority girl survives solely on Diet Coke and the tears of the pledges she personally victimized. She's a Monica, a Marnie, a Miranda, and a Regina. Her favorite hobbies include drinking $14 bottles of wine and binge-watching season 2 of Grey's Anatomy until she cries. You can send her annoying e-mails at RecruitChairTSM@gmail.com

Don’t worry, average looking girls. This is just another example of the false reality 10’s face on a daily basis. Ask yourself, would you rather take a B on a paper that deserved a B, or an A on a paper that deserved a C? At the end of the day the grade on your paper is just a letter, but living your life thinking you’re smart when in reality you’re too stupid to not know you’re dumb as shit is 10x worse.

Interesting study because I feel like I’ve experienced the opposite, I’m extremely attractive but sometimes I feel like professors think I’m dumb because of it. Pretty girls usually get the stereotype of being stupid so it’s funny how this research shows otherwise.